South African robotics team Texpand shattered records and achieved impressive scores at the FIRST World Championships held in Houston, raising the bar once again for SA in the global world of tech and science!
Cape Town, South Africa (02 May 2025) – After an impressive victory at the SA Nationals FIRST Tech Challenge, where they won the top Inspire Award and the Winning Alliance Captain title, robotics team Texpand earned their place among the elite at the FIRST World Championships in Houston last month.
Texpand earns its place among the robotics elite
Out of the more than 10,000 teams that compete globally, Texpand was one of 256 teams that qualified.
FIRST Robotics is a tool to educate school students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths skills (STEM) using robotics games as the mechanism.
Every year, the competitors are faced with a brand new robotics game with a variety of tasks and challenges that they must perform to outscore the opposing teams. Teams are given about four months to design and build a robot to score maximum points in the game.
This season’s challenge was titled “Into the Deep,” a sea-themed game where robots were tasked with collecting box-shaped game pieces called “samples.” Points were scored by placing these samples in small baskets positioned high above ground level. Alternatively, a sample could be taken to a designated corner where a human player would attach a clip to turn it into a “specimen.” This specimen could then be scored by clipping it onto a horizontal bar.
In each match, two robots formed an alliance to compete against another alliance. Typically, one robot specialised in scoring samples in the baskets, while the other focused on scoring specimens on the bars.
Texpand establishes itself as a dominant force
Texpand has been recognised as a leading “sample” team globally throughout the entire season, setting autonomous records from September 2024.
At the World Championships, they continued to set records, achieving the highest divisional score, setting a new world record for autonomous samples, and boasting the highest sample points scored by a single robot in any match this season. The team also became the first African team to rank high enough in qualifying rounds to become an alliance captain and pick partner teams for the final playoffs.
Although the team’s performance in scoring samples was unrivaled in the world, this wasn’t enough to win the championship because each match is played in a two-team alliance and Texpand was eliminated in the final playoff stage of the competition, when their alliance partner’s autonomous (first 30 seconds of a match) failed, putting them well behind on score.
Texpand also managed to win the Control Award again this year – a judged award given to the team that demonstrates innovative thinking and solutions to solve game challenges such as autonomous operation, improving mechanical systems with intelligent control, or using sensors to achieve better results.
A team that inspires
The popularity and respect gained by Texpand throughout the season were shown by a continuous flow of people from all over the world, coming to their stand to find out more about their robot and express appreciation for the inspiration that Texpand has been to the global FTC community.
Although the 4-day World Championship competition schedule was demanding, the Texpand team members made the most of being around the best of the best teams in the world, attending evening meetings and participating in practice “scrimmage” sessions to improve their global connections.
The World Championships is the highlight of Texpand’s season, not only because they get to play with and against the best robots in the world, but also because they get to meet the online friends they’ve made on the community Discord. They also get to collaborate and share ideas with teams whose work they’ve respected and followed throughout the season, and most of all, they get to reconnect with old friends from the previous years.
Many of the connections made at the World Championships have opened doors for Texpand to collaborate on joint projects and online conferences, giving them exposure to working with people from other cultures and languages. This has, in turn, attracted financial investment into SA robotics and enriched the robotics community, both locally in SA and abroad.
Texpand looks ahead
Now, with the World Championships behind the team, the education effort and teamwork will go on.
Looking ahead, Texpand is committed to nurturing the robotics community, hosting workshops with top international teams and participating in prestigious global events.
Sources: Supplied
Don’t ever miss the Good Things. Download the Good Things Guy App now on Apple or Google.
Do you have something to add to this story? Please share it in the comments or follow GoodThingsGuy on Facebook & Twitter to keep up to date with good news as it happens, or share your good news with us by clicking here or click the link below to listen to the Good Things Guy Podcast with Brent Lindeque – South Africa’s very own Good Things Guy. He’s on a mission to change what the world pays attention to, and he truly believes there’s good news around us. In the Good Things Guy podcast, you’ll meet these everyday heroes & hear their incredible stories:
Or watch an episode of Good Things TV below, a show created to offer South Africans balance in a world with what feels like constant bad news. We’re here to remind you that there are still so many good things happening in South Africa & we’ll leave you feeling a little more proudly South African.
by 